Old Secrets Made New

Once information has been in the public domain for a few years, it wouldn't seem to be "secret," but that bit of common sense hasn't deterred the Bush administration from reclassifying information about nuclear weaponry that used to be publicly available.

Researchers at the National Security Archive, an independent library that belongs to The George Washington University, found that officials from the Pentagon and US Department of Energy have been trawling through reports that have been released to the public and deleting numbers of missiles, despite some of the statistics being decades old.

You may recall this TalkLeft post about the administration's obsession with secrecy, leading to the reclassification of more than 55,000 documents. Today's news is more of the same. Open government, anyone?

soccerdad,
Do you just make this stuff up?
A few minutes on Lexis found this brief notice of "newly declassified" Army papers which describe more war crimes than previously thought. The date? August 5th.

This secret is numbers of strategic nuclear weapons. As someone interested in the military and a war gamer I have all this classified material. I purchased some of it in general desk encyclopedias at bookstores and supermarkets.
I think I will make you a partner in passing secrets - 1n 1973 the US had 30 strategic bomber squadrons , 1000 Minuteman ICBMs and 54 Titan ICBMs.
That is the some of the material that has been reclassified secret after 30+ years.
Under the court case last week you are all now felons for receiving classified information concerning national security I purchased in 1974 for $2.95.

The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by law, and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went largely unnoticed.

The Times examined most of the files and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages -- about a third of the total -- before government officials removed them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

I have another source I'll try and find it that explicitly said they were reclassified.

That article is chilling.
These things always happen in war, but people always forget. It's not becasue soldiers are bad, but it's because killing, death and violence are integral parts of war. And if you surround enough humans with killing, violence and death a natural reaction in at least some will be becomes desensitized to the value of human life. It's just so tragic that it keeps happening over and over again, and will for ages to come.

Too bad this didn't come out in the fall of 2004. It would have sent the swiftboaters home with their tails between their legs.

not really. they required the complicity of the MSM, who gladly gave it. the MSM shamelessly puffs anything by these people, regardless of whether or not it has any basis in fact.
facts are not the job of the MSM. remember "whitewater", anyone?